Old record players

[beccabear67]

Around 1976 my parents bought one with a smoked-plastic lid that you had to take off completely - no hinge - to access the deck. It had two wired speakers and was perhaps a Fidelity, but not sure.

We had one with a no-hinges cover like that, kind of an annoyance.

[andrec]

Yep, it was rather a bind to have to completely remove the lid every time you wanted to use it. The Waltham made more sense in that it was hinged, although being plastic you had to be careful in case it cracked.

[beccabear67]

I remember an older Dansette type player with a heavy turntable on it, the whole thing looked very '50s including the metal play arm, but it did play LPs. It had one speaker (mono) but you could detach it from the player box and set it away from that as far as the wire to it went. It looked like a piece of luggage when all closed up and had a handle.

[absinthe_boy]

When I was 2 or 3 in 1975/6, my dad tried to teach me to play records on his pretty decent stereo record player. I was too ham fisted to really be able to do it, and one Sunday morning I crept downstairs to have another go and ended up scratching a lot of his records

But rather than punish me, my parents bought me a 1960 ish vanity case record player, and I was permitted to go get one second hand 45 every week from the local record shop (which I am delighted to report is still going strong in 2025). After maybe three years that record player broke and I was given another 60s record player. this one a bit more conventionally styled for the time but not a genuine Dansette. I think it may have been an ECKO.

Sometime in the early 80s my mother found that her original Dansette Major was still alive and well in her mother's house and she gave that to me, instructing me to give mine to a friend. Sadly my old record player ended up in a shed, never used and skipped in the 90s. But I still have mum's Dansette and it still works. It's looking a bit shabby as she insisted on keeping it in a shed when I left home. But it's totally restorable.

Dad eventually upgraded his stereo record player in 1980 and after a while passed it onto me. By this time the cat had chewed one of the loudspeaker cables and fried the left channel of the amp. Despite the best efforts of an electrical engineer the internal amp never worked after that so he bought me a Realistic micro stereo amp from Tandy to use with it. The record player was a Medley Music Stereo System, based around a Garrard 2025 deck and was pretty decent for it's late 60s manufacturing date. Late 80s it started slowing down and I got a cheap turntable from Tandy before buying a really good Systemdek turntable in 1991...which is still the centerpiece of my stereo system today.

Anyway...the Medley record player went up into the loft for 25 years before I found myself at my mum's house for a weekend and decided to get it down and see if I could get it to work. Turns out the induction motor needed stripping, cleaning and putting back....and voila....it still needs an amp but it's working fine as a turntbale. I entrusted it to my closest friend, and it's now pride of place in her living room with full autochange functioning perfectly.

The cheap Tandy turntable which replaced it is now my "office turntable" with that Realistic micro amp still doing it's job for both the turntable and my office PC. The Dansette is better preserved so as not to become more damaged and the Systemdek seems indestructable.

So....yeah....I still have nearly every record player/turntable which has been through my hands. All still in frequently apart from the Dansette which I am hoping to have restored before bringing it back into use in a bedroom.